About

Thank you for your interest in learning about the author of this blog. I’m Antonio Cangiano and I work as a Software Development Manager and AI Evangelist at IBM.

I’ll start with a disclaimer that is required by both my employer and my type of job. It’s my personal blog, which is entirely independent of IBM. My articles and comments are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer positions, strategies or opinions.

In case you were wondering, I’m Italian and I was born and raised in Italy. In 2003. I decided to leave my country, foreseeing the worsening of its economy in the years to come. I spent two and a half years in Ireland, and then I moved to Canada in 2006.

The “Zen” in the title of this blog should be intended philosophically and not religiously, as I’m a happy rationalist atheist.

I’m very passionate about programming languages, algorithms, database and development in general, and I have a soft spot for mathematics as well (I used to run a math blog before I sold it). I’m mostly interested in dynamic languages, and best known for Ruby, but I also know and program in a few other languages and never stop looking at interesting developments elsewhere. My favorite web framework is Rails, but I’m not religious about it. I am a big advocate of using the right tool for the right job, and whatever makes you happy in the end.

Related interests of mine include: number crunching and applied mathematics, data science, big data, startups, and entrepreneurship in general, blogging, social media, digital marketing, and above all staying on the cutting edge of technology both on and off the web. On a more personal level, my hobbies include photography, reading, hiking, cycling, target shooting, fountain pen collecting, and whatever I happened to be into in a given month. 🙂

I have made small contributions to a few books, and authored two full books myself:

If you are a regular reader or attended one of the conferences or meetups where I was a speaker, feel free to add me to your network by visiting my LinkedIn profile or by emailing me at acangiano@gmail.com (I trust Bayesian spam filtering).

Feel free to get in touch, but please keep in mind that I receive many emails every day, so if the subject matter is not urgent or important, you may have to wait a little while before receiving an answer (if I manage to answer), don’t take it personally. You can also follow me on Twitter, if you’d like to get to know me better.

Legal stuff

Some of the links contained within this site have my referral id, which provides me with a small commission for each sale. Think of it as a form of tipping that doesn’t cost you anything. 🙂 Thank you for your support.